Have you ever had an idea so ridiculous, you thought it just might work? If you never went through with it, you might regret it after reading these stories. From ingenious ways to pull out a loose tooth to getting a free ride home with your food delivery, these people share their ideas that were so dumb, they actually ended up working.
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#1 Faked Sick
I once faked being sick when I was in middle school and told my mom I had a sore throat and felt a cold coming on. She took me to the doctor and it turned out that I did, in fact, have strep throat.
#2 Hoped for the Best
In university, I was late on an assignment that was supposed to be in my T.A.'s drop box by noon that day. I didn't manage to get there until almost three so I was sure he had already emptied it. Now, the drop boxes were literal boxes in cubbies with a slot on the front and a lock on them that prevented them from being pulled out. The rack holding them was just a basic metal frame with about 5 rows of boxes. My T.A.'s box was somewhere in the middle of the shelf.
So I figured, "I'm late anyways, why not take a chance?" and slipped my assignment into the box below my T.A.'s box. I got my assignment handed back a few weeks later than everyone else and it had a note from another T.A. scribbled on it that said, "Looks like this fell into my box by mistake." I got full marks on the assignment.
#3 Home Delivery
I used to know a guy who, every week, would order his Saturday night curry for delivery while sitting in the pub and then walk over the road to the curry house and get it and himself delivered home. This went on for about 10-12 weeks. One week, we were sitting having a pint and the owner of the curry house walked in, took his order, and had him picked up from the pub. He said it was easier for everyone concerned.
#4 Became a Carpet Cleaner
Real estate told me I had to have the carpets professionally cleaned (wasn't in the contract) or I'd lose my $800 bond. I did some research and found out I could become an accredited carpet cleaner as there are no official licencing boards in my state. So, I did what any sane person would do. I paid the $85, did the online course and got my certificate. Registered a business name, ABN etc. etc. All free. Handed the property management a copy of my accreditation and an invoice for services. I became a professional carpet cleaner and launched a vacate cleaning business that is still going six months later.
#5 MacGyver
I used a soap bottle as a makeshift sink plunger
#6 Invested in Heinz
In college, my buddy and I took an investing class and for one of the projects we had a month to “invest” fake dollars into the stock market and see which team would have the most money after a month. It was spring semester so we put all of our fake money into Heinz, thinking there would be a spike in ketchup and mustard sales as the weather got warmer. The next day, Berkshire Hathaway purchased the entire Heinz company and the professor accused us of insider trading. We had no idea what we were doing.
#7 Tire Change
Bobcat tire blew during a job. Had another tire, but no jack. Positioned the Bobcat behind a dump truck. Bobcat then tries to lift the back end of the dump truck, dump truck hella heavy, bobcat lifted itself instead, tire changed and back to work.
#8 Changed Names
In college, I was taking a class that required me to purchase an online textbook and workbook that was registered under your name, basically ensuring that each student would have to buy a new online copy each semester instead of buying used textbooks. I had a friend who took this class a semester before me so we came up with the idea to message customer service and explain that I had recently gotten married (so my last name had changed) and I legally changed my first name from [my friend’s first name] to [my first name] and I would need them to change it in their system. It totally worked and the rep even congratulated me on my marriage.
#9 Easy Password
Put Jesus in as the WiFi password in church. It worked.
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#10 Extra Test Boost
Back in high school, I stopped by one of my teacher’s rooms after class to ask him some questions about our homework. When I walked in, I noticed he was grading some of our tests. Of note, all of his tests were made up of multiple-choice, true/false, or matching, and all of the answers were bubbled in. What I noticed was that instead of using an answer key to grade, he was just placing a stencil over the paper with the correct bubble punched out. The stencil wasn’t transparent, so all it showed was whether we bubbled in the right answer or not. Flash forward to our next test, and I’m stuck on a T/F question. Knowing how he graded, I figured I’d bubble in both T and F, and if he caught it, it would be easy enough to claim it was an accident. Well, he didn’t catch it, and I used that trick the rest of the year for a little extra boost on all of his tests.
#11 Fixed the Car Dent
Bet my husband I could fix the dent in the car with a plunger. It worked.
#12 Smart Excuse
I once got an extra day to work on a video project in high school by coming to class with a video that was just a quarter second of blackness, eagerly volunteering to go first, then acting confused and scared when the file "didn't work." The teacher took pity on me and told me to just bring it the following day, and I got to finish it that evening and still got full credit as if I did it on time.
#13 Breaking and Entering
Breaking into my own house through the kitchen window using a piece of wire and a wooden table after I was locked out.
#14 Lied on the Resume
It probably wouldn't work in this day and age but back when I was young I was tired of retail and wanted an office job. I just lied and pulled a total George Costanza what with friends coached to answer their phones as a business and such. I got hired as an admin assistance and been steadily moving up since.
#15 Found Earrings
Not my idea but my mom's. I dropped one of my earrings and couldn't find it so she threw my other earring on the floor and it happened to land next to the first one.
#16 Threw a Phone
Back in the flip phone days, I had dropped mine and the screen stopped working. I could make and receive calls, but the screen was just completely blank. I put up with it for a couple of weeks because I couldn't afford a new phone, but one day I had the thought of "Well, if dropping the phone made the connection loose, maybe the same thing can fix it" and threw my phone at the ground. I picked it back up and the screen was working.
#17 Used Crisco
We had a noisy rotating rooster weathervane. It was loud enough to keep people awake on windy nights, despite having been lubed. So I filled the hole the rooster rotates in with Crisco, even though people said it was a dumb idea and wouldn't work. Never had to lube it again because the Crisco didn't break down like other lubes.
#18 Used Bread as Paper Towel
We were at a friend's house about to cook a roast. It needed to be patted dry with paper towel, but he was all out. I semi-jokingly suggested using a couple of slices of bread. We all chuckled at the idea. It worked perfectly.
#19 Pulled an Office Space
I was really REALLY desperate to leave past employer after 15 years. Had been applying and interviewing and striking out. Finally got an interview at a place where (at the time) I felt, "meh, I am not really sure this is right for me, but anything is better than where I am at."
Instead of prepping for the interview, rehearsing answers, etc...I pulled an "office space." I was cocky, brash, unconcerned, made it seem like I was happy where I was at and didn't really care if I got the job or not. They called me back the next week and I waited a week to return their call. Same deal with the second interview. When they offered me the job, I hemmed and hawed, said I needed to think about it really hard, and that it was a "big move" for me, etc., etc. I came back and demanded well over $15,000 above what they were offering in salary. They accepted.
#20 Return to Sender
One time I sent a letter to a local address by putting the return address as the address I wanted it to go to, not putting postage, and dropping it off in a public mailbox. Went to return to sender due to insufficient postage.
#21 Creative Cover Letter
Years ago I remember applying to a bunch of copywriting jobs and feeling frustrated because I wasnt hearing back from any of the places I was applying. It was especially frustrating because I was putting in all this time on cover letters and I felt like nobody was even reading them, so I said, "Fuck it, I'm gonna write one that is ridiculous, that is more me." I absolutely thought it was a dumb idea and never imagined that it would work, but somehow it did.
I applied the subject line "Copywriter: Will Work for Beer" to a job that I was underqualified for. It managed to catch the eye of the headhunter for the ad agency and was enough to get me an interview. Shortly after that I was hired and ended up working there for a few years. However, this probably wouldn't work everywhere, but it fit the culture of the agency. Plus the job listing said that I would be working for beer brands as clients and that free beer was a perk of the job.
#22 Fixed the Internet
"Hit the router" Slap
"Thanks"
#23 Committed Insurance Fraud
In my freshman year of college, my grades were really not great. And my parents were really strict about getting good grades. When my dad asked to see my grades, I panicked and did the inspect command on the computer where you can change typefaces on the screen to read different words and letters. I changed all of my shitty grades to good grades. My dad was so happy that I did “good” my first year of school. He asked me to print my results. I did, and turns out he had to send them to our car insurance company for a “good student discount”. Ultimately, I committed insurance fraud by accident. But I got the discount.
#24 Used a Sewing Needle on a Record
Using a sewing needle to remove a bit of dirt that was making one of my records skip. Bear in mind my hands are shaky as hell so it was certainly very tense and there was the danger of messing up the whole thing.
#25 Creative Problem Solver
I forgot to bring a resume to a job interview, but I had an index card in my bag. I cut the index card in half and wrote my name, my contact info, and “creative problem solver” in my best handwriting, and gave a copy of my “business card” to both the interviewers. I got the job.
#26 Free Ride Home
At College was at a friend's house on the other side of town, it was very late and the buses had stopped so my only way home was to call a cab (this was before Uber). I was also really hungry so, because I only had about $10, my choice was either get some takeout and walk for an hour to get home at night, or call a cab and go hungry. Then Eureka! I went in to the Chinese takeout place and asked for a delivery to my home address and asked for a ride home. They protested at first but I explained that me hitching a ride was no extra cost for them. They agreed and I got a free ride home and a Chinese takeout!
#27 Wore a Helmet
Wearing a motorcycle helmet while snow blowing. I did it because I missed riding, it kept my face warm and when snow would fly back at me the visor would protect me.
#28 Didn't Change a Thing
I was working as art director at an animation studio, making videos for clients. One client was especially pesky about the use of yellow in the background. They wanted it to be that of their logo, which was this horrible neon-piss yellow. We advised against it, but after numerous calls we had to cave and gave a version with that colour. They hated it, and asked for a change. What followed were 12 versions with numerous calls in between tweaking the colour over and over.
Eventually, I got tired of it and just sent the original version again, I didn't even bother to rename the file. The client said "this looks exactly the way I wanted, thank you"! How that ever went right I still have no idea.
#29 Snuck People Into a Tour
A friend and I once snuck 15 people into a Warped Tour by giving them some bracelets from a party supply store and clipboards full of paper. We walked up to the side gate and said we were with Rock The Vote. The security guard waved us right in.
#30 Crush Coffee Beans with a Car
Our power was out due to a storm. I had a campstove to use for boiling water to make a coffee pour-thru, but I couldn't use my electric grinder for the coffee beans. I tried fashioning a mortal and pestle but it was taking too long. So, I put the coffee beans in a couple of ziplock bags, placed the bag right behind a car tire, then ran over it back and forth a couple of times to crush the beans. Worked like a charm.
#31 Inappropriate Patterns
I hated my math teacher and she was making us do a project on patterns even though we were in seventh grade, so my pattern was a series of increasingly longer sideways penises. She didn’t even notice and I got an A.
#32 Sorry, Don't Remember
When I was younger I got called into HR because I drew a very detailed picture of a penis. It was really really good. The HR meeting happened like a week after I drew it and my only defense was "I don't recall doing that, do you happen to have the picture? It might jog my memory." They didn't have it of course because I had it, and because I didn't confess they couldn't do anything. Investigation results inconclusive, have a nice day.
#33 Not Safe
“I'm stuck on a cliff, but if I jump at a really sharp angle at that gravel field, I could just slide down there and be fine, just like in TV!“ Every time I think about this I am amazed I'm not either flattened by a rock, or impact against something. Childhood really is just the turorial level sometimes.
#34 Test Drove Furniture
When I was young and broke I bought a sofa from a used furniture store. I had no way to take the sofa home. I went to a used car lot a couple of blocks away and took a truck for a test drive...
#35 Used the Car
Got a really long drill bit stuck in a piece of thick wood. I tried everything I could think of to yank it out. My solution that ended up working for me was attaching the drill bit to a chain, put the chain on my truck, and have a piece of wood kind of stuck between two branches of a tree. I drove off slowly and it popped right out.
#36 Cleaned Headphones
My headphones kept cutting out, so I took a toothpick and scraped the inside of the headphone jack on my phone. Several clumps of dust fell out, and afterwards, the headphones worked just fine.
#37 Played Dumb
If I stop showing coworkers how to use excel, I'll get to do all the easy excel stuff while simultaneously being patted on the back for doing the hard stuff on the team no one else good. Basically, unless you want to be super upper management and give your life to your work, play clueless. Don't let them know you could simplify a report that takes several days into literally minutes. Shhhhhhhhh, someone else will take the credit and then you'd have more to do.
#38 Pokemon Go GPS
Using Pokemon Go to get home after getting on the wrong bus and ending up in a random town.
#39 Made a Hornet Trap
There was a swarm of hornets that had made a nest under the front of our porch with only one specific narrow entry in or out. Spray wouldn't work and it was right under our front door, so had no way to keep exterminating them. Then I realized "why not whirring blades of metal?"We DID have an old 50s metal fan and I could maybe blow them away from the entrance so they had no way to get in.
The unanticipated effect was that it worked, though after a few hours had created a Civil War battlefield of dead or dying hornets piling up like a zombie tower in World War Z. Every few moments you'd hear "thunk" as another hornet fell into the trap. So satisfying.
#40 Got Out of a Speeding Ticket
I was pulled over for speeding by a state trooper with a car full of friends in college. I didn’t have time to explain to them what I was about to do, and to just go with it. Officer is walking with that swagger walk they do when they do they’re gonna write a ticket. He comes up to the window and I’m having a full-on asthma attack wheezing and rocking back and forth saying “My inhaler ran out, trying to get to a Walgreens for a new one,” the guy was like, “Follow me!” I got a police escort to buy a pack of gum. Got out of the ticket.
#41 Made This Mistake
Mixing strong coffee with monster energy. It worked because I wrote half a book in one sitting. It was dumb because...well...
#42 Kept a Secret
So it was my mom's birthday: we're barbecuing and we got her to stay inside and prep food so we can decorate the front with balloons and streamers and what have you. Well, we got the whole thing done in secret as hoped, but then we realized there was no way we could get all the leftover decoration material and balloon pump inside without her noticing.
Now there are two ways into our house: the back door that leads into the garage and then into the kitchen where mom was, and the front door which is visible from the kitchen sink. So, I told my brother I would go in from the back door and distract her while he brought the stuff in through the front, and down the hall past the kitchen
Once I got in the kitchen it had occurred to me that I had no plan of attack so I just said, "Hey mom look at this dance I made" and started like swaying and bopping up and down and doing jazz hands and going "lalalala." Mind you, I'm like 17 years old.
So she's just watching me and when bro comes in and is sneaking through the hall behind her with all the stuff, i keep telling her "wait it's about to get good" and she kept watching in confusion. The second he was in the clear, I stopped and said "Ok that's it" and that was that. We succeeded.
#43 Stuck a Video Card in the Oven
Had a video card die on me. Thought that maybe the solder had melted away from it overheating, so I had the idea to stick it in the oven briefly to melt the solder into place. Looked online and it is apparently a normal thing to do. Worked like a charm.
#44 Pulled a Loose Tooth
I was like seven and had a loose tooth that I couldn't pull out. I tried to string attached to the door. It didn't work. So I tied a string to it and tied the other end to my dog's collar. Threw a tennis ball. Bye-bye tooth.
#45 Got a Free ATV
Pulled an ATV out of a ravine with another ATV using an extension cord.
